


when they used to run

by kathleenfergie



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alzheimer's Disease, F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-09
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3709099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathleenfergie/pseuds/kathleenfergie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Of all the small things Harry actually remembers, he remembers running. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>He remembers running through trees and fields, licking sap from the bark of maple trees, getting his horns caught in another stag’s when challenged. Ginny’s spots, littering her back like the freckles did her human face. </i></p><p> </p><p>The last few years of Harry's life as he suffers from Alzheimer's disease.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when they used to run

**Author's Note:**

> this is some fucking sad shit, my friends, but i thought of it and was like 'yas i have to write this.' i researched a little before writing this, but like if the alzheimer's part of this fic isn't proper at all, message me. i tried to be as simple and common in his symptoms as i could be. but i liked it and am glad i wrote it so hope you enjoy. 
> 
> this ain't the notebook, btw, if you're worried. 
> 
> don't own shit.

Of all the small things Harry actually remembers, he remembers running. He remembers running through trees and fields, licking sap from the bark of maple trees, getting his horns caught in another stag’s when challenged. Ginny’s spots, littering her back like the freckles did her human face. 

She takes him to the park every afternoon, coming home from the Ministry with pastries she tells him are his favourite. They do taste good, he agrees, but the ones without jam in the middle sit better in his stomach. He holds her hand because it comforts her, but he finds his wrinkled hands sweating against hers. She’s too unfamiliar these days, too old to turn into her woodland self, but then again, so is he. 

It hurts, the lost memories. 

When Hermione drags him up to Hogwarts for a couple weeks, he’s in Neville’s office, head in the pensieve, looking at half moon spectacles. Harry doesn’t understand why they cause him such pain, but Ginny can only pat his hand and smile sadly when he asks. The man was old when Harry himself had been just a boy, so he must be gone now. 

He eats his meals in the great hall, staring at each floating candle as the flames dance with each other, creating scenes. A student below causes the flames to turn into deers racing against the wind. Harry smiles, knowing the feeling all too well. It rains horribly while he’s at the school, no trips outside recommended. 

Harry gazes down at the famed forest through wet glass and asks Neville about the centaur population. The kind headmaster smiles and explains they’ve helped in keeping out students that are too adventurous, no longer hiding as they did before. When Harry thinks of the forest in his dreams, he has visions of a silvery stag chasing cloaks. Seemed silly to him, but he knew it was a memory. 

He can tell what are memories and what are things he’s made up in his head. He remembers his honeymoon, where he and Ginny spent weeks in the woods, a small cabin at their reign. It’s a good one, it makes him happy. He cries when he loses parts of it, but the sum of it all is there. He talks to Ginny about it often, which makes her cry, too. She’ll still kiss him, though, tears dripping against his cheek. 

He’s too tired to stay any longer, so they leave the castle for their small home in London. It’s close to St. Mungo’s and every month Ginny or someone else takes him up there to check his progress. The healer’s know he can’t get better, the muggle disease being irreversible, but they help him with the short-term memory loss and the panic attacks. He can’t walk up to the hospital by himself anymore after he got lost coming from the Ministry. A young muggle girl found him wandering around the street crying for his wife.

Eventually he got home, but the incident spiked too much fear in the family. If the kids weren’t too busy they’d take him, but then they would have to portkey all the way to London and it was more work than Harry was comfortable with. 

Albus listens to him talk about his animorphmagus days and paints him things that match the stories. The man has too much talent, his parents tell him often, and when Harry gets a new painting or sketch by owl, he’s happy. He forgets why they come, but it doesn’t matter so much. Albus’s signature is enough for him to accept the gift. 

Loud noises upset him, and Ginny has to watch quidditch with the telly on mute or he has an episode. They get worse on big holidays, when fireworks and crowds are in the streets. Ginny wards the house with muffling spells, but they don’t work completely and he paces the upstairs hallway, blabbering. 

Lily comes for tea every week, usually bringing a new knitted contraption to help the old couple keep some warmth in their bones, her small children building glowing towers with wizard blocks. They’re enchanted not to make any noise when they topple over, something many are happy for around Harry. He gets irritated when they squeal and chase each other around, but they can’t help it so he grumbles to himself. 

He mostly spends his days in a comfy chair, as is the cliche life of a grandad, but he has the Prophet, telly, and Ginny now. She takes leave from her Ministry job (something started after a quidditch injury in her knee), the rookie Aurors at the hands of some other dimwit that will no doubt boss them around half as successfully as his wife does. In the early days of that job she’d curse the bludger that hit her, making her have to deal with incompetent trainees. 

Ron’s still a trainer at the Ministry, despite his age, and he sends too many owls to Ginny detailing how the department is without her. When he comes, he brings wizard’s chess for the two of them. 

Harry hates how angry he can get sometimes, without even noticing it. He’ll be fine one second, and then his wand will be sizzling in his pocket, ready to be grabbed and fired. The healers tell him aggression is common now that he’s had this bloody disease for almost three years. He yells at Ginny when he doesn’t mean to, and smashes his favourite mug often. He’s glad most of his long-term knowledge is still with him; Harry doubts he could survive his daily life without knowing _reparo_ or _scourgify_. 

They told him at St. Mungo’s the day of his diagnosis that with their magic they could keep him alive longer than the muggle’s usually could, but he didn’t want any of it. Harry thinks he’s escaped death enough times, that maybe it is time. He told them long ago that he’ll live until he can no longer function, and then they’ll put him in Godric’s Hollow. That’s all he wanted. 

His legs go a couple months after Hogwarts, and he cries whenever he can’t get out of his chair. George transfigures it into a wheelchair of sorts, able to switch back and forth from its comfy form to its functional one. Harry is grateful, but there is a bitterness in his throat as James wheels him out to the park one afternoon. 

His bachelor son comes often after Harry’s in the wheelchair, and although it’s tough when his father can’t remember what’s going on, he is glad to spend the time with him. His mother hugs him tighter each time he leaves, a pat on his father’s shoulder before flooing home. 

Harry thinks of the woods when he’s at the park, of the leaves he would find in his hair after apparating home, Ginny’s ponytail loose from the transformation. He remembers lying naked in the highlands and almost being shot during hunting season. They are happy and sad memories that he doesn’t say aloud but they comfort him a little, stuck in his chair all day. Hugo joked to him that he ought to spell his legs to walk for his uncle and make Harry dance around. 

It’s a year before they make the decision to put him in the long-term ward of St. Mungo’s. Rose is the head of the department and pops her head in every day to check on him, letting him roll himself over to other’s rooms. It tires him terribly to do magic, so he only visits his neighbours every other day. Even then, he barely talks, just listens to the ones who can’t help but rabble on continuously, their mouths moving of their own volition. 

His children come and go, bringing the grandchildren who don’t understand why he doesn’t remember last week’s visit (or the one before, for that matter), and Ginny is there almost everyday. She’s back at the Ministry (Harry made her go back, seeing how much he was taking out of her) and it’s good for her, but Harry misses the days where they’d sit together on the couch, Ginny reading out the most ridiculous behaviour violations the Aurors wrote on each other. 

They had a good life, the two of them. He just hates that he won’t be there for the end of her days. 

James comes and reads to him, either from the Prophet or a muggle book he’s discovered. Harry lets out a few words every so often, commentary on the news or events in novels. He thinks a lot more than he can manage talking and it hurts not being able to speak, makes him angrier. 

He gets too weak for the chair and the bed isn’t nearly as comfortable as it should be, but he can only communicate that to Rose by thrashing about, which he loses control of early. It’s sad for Harry to see himself like this, but he can’t help half of what goes on. A lovely nurse whose name escapes every time she enters the room feeds him food that he tries his hardest not to choke on and helps him drink water. 

Ginny takes over for her when she’s there, and that’s easier for him. Mostly his life consists of nurses, Rose, his wife, and the awful bed. 

Ginny’s there the night he goes for good, and he says “running” over and over again as she strokes his white hair back, still ridiculous after all these years. She crawls to his side and cries against him, telling him about when they used to run. 

Harry dies at his wife’s side and when he closes his eyes for the last time, he relives running, branches whipping his sides, his hooves hard against soft dirt, and Ginny at his side weaving in between trees.


End file.
